Report
November 2014
Venezuela’s foreign policy:
a mirage based on a curse
By Jean-Paul Marthoz
Executive summary
Venezuela’s foreign policy has been shaped by Hugo Chavez’s strategy of domestic and international
polarisation. Although his death has blurred the readability of this foreign policy, it still appears to be
driven by the will to reshape a continent and a world dominated by “U.S. imperialism”.
This vision has resulted in a deliberate effort to promote Latin American integration as a bulwark against
the U.S. and the so-called “Washington Consensus”. The corollary has been a close partnership with Cuba
and forms of economic and political cooperation meant to undermine the Inter-American system. Beyond
Latin America, Venezuela has privileged its relations with countries questioning U.S. leadership, even if
this meant breaking with the country’s liberal internationalist tradition by openly collaborating with antiWestern authoritarian states and radical movements.
Venezuela’s international influence was overestimated during Chavez’s rule. Despite its hyperactivism,
the country was not able to play a consistent and significant role on the world scene. Chavismo has
inspired a number of governments and social movements in Latin America, but it has also been seen as
a spoiler and an unpredictable actor.
Venezuela’s foreign ambitions have been a mirage based on a resource curse. Oil diplomacy has
undoubtedly opened doors from Latin America to China and Africa, but Venezuela has failed to end its
mono-commodity dependence. Both its foreign policy and domestic programmes remain hostage to
fluctuations in oil prices and the country’s resource management policies.
Its oil-based diplomacy has also underlined the rentier nature of Venezuela’s economy and the fickleness
of its political rule. Even if its internal social policies and foreign assistance have been lauded in
progressive circles, Chavismo’s illiberalism, its inability to address rampant violent crime, and its
economic mismanagement have undermined Venezuela’s soft power and seriously compromised its
capacity to play a solid and sustainable role in Latin America and beyond.
A tradition of foreign activism
In the 14 years leading up to the death of Hugo Chavez in
March 2013, Venezuela was a very vocal and visible international actor. This foreign policy activism, however, was not
a total break with the past. In the late 1950s and early 1960s
the Accion Democrática (AD) party of President Romulo
Betancourt – a social democratic party – pursued a policy of
direct support to democratic forces in the Caribbean. In the
1970s President Carlos Andres Perez, who was vice-president of the Socialist International, actively helped the
Sandinista uprising in Nicaragua and opposed military
dictatorships in the region. Although closer to Washington,
his Christian Democratic (COPEI) successor kept his
distance from the Reagan administration’s military interventions in Central America by joining the Contadora peace
process.
On the economic front Venezuela also challenged Northern
countries’ interests. In 1960 it was a co-founder of the
Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC),
NOREF Report – November 2014
while in the 1970s Caracas became one of the capitals of
the New World Economic Order. The launch of initiatives to
reinforce Latin American integration often originated from
or had the support of Venezuela.
This foreign activism ended when the second Carlos
Andres Perez administration (1989-93) was faced with
rising international indebtedness, economic meltdown,
social unrest and internal political turmoil expressed by
the bloody repression of a popular revolt, the so-called
1989 Caracazo, and by Hugo Chavez’s failed military coup
in 1992.
Chavez’s legacy
When he won the presidency in 1999, Chavez resumed this
activist foreign policy tradition, but introduced two tectonic
changes: on the one hand, he dropped the liberal democratic ideology and, on the other, while his social democratic and Christian democratic predecessors had
­attempted reforms, Chavez adopted a confrontational line
with the West and pushed for a radical rearrangement of
the international system.
Chavista foreign policy is described by leading Venezuelan
academic Carlos Romero as an attempt at “soft balancing”,
i.e. striving “short of military actions” to undermine and
frustrate the foreign policy objectives of other more
powerful nations, and in particular the U.S., which Hugo
Chavez has always considered, like his hero Simon Bolivar,
as a threat to genuine Latin American independence.
To some extent Chavismo, with its polarisation strategy
inside and outside Venezuela’s borders, has been
a continuation of the cold war ideological paradigm and of
the 1960s Cuban-inspired Tricontinental. Breaking with the
Washington Consensus, Chavez dusted off the idea,
flamboyantly expressed in Eduardo Galeano’s best seller
The Open Veins of Latin America, that Latin America’s
economic and social problems are mostly due to Northern
countries’ predation, and in particular U.S. hegemony and
the complicity of local oligarchies.
Chavez’s quest was to break these dependency links.
On the media front, for instance, the launch of Telesur,
a Caracas-based Latin American TV channel (with Cuban,
Argentinian and Uruguayan support) was meant to counter
the “CNN-isation” of Latin America, while restrictive media
laws and the expansion of state-owned and community
media strove to marginalise local private media moguls
and reduce the space for dissenting voices.
Venezuela’s objective reality of poverty, inequality and
discrimination was also a major definer of Chavismo.
Despite the rise of a “Bolibourgeoisie” and a strong and
privileged military nomenklatura, sentiments of social and
racial humiliation remain the major glue of the Chavista
popular coalition. This internal reality was exported to the
realm of foreign policy by conceiving foreign aid, like
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PetroCaribe, and Latin American cooperation initiatives,
like the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America
(ALBA), as replications on the international scene of the
country’s domestic social justice programmes. Based on
these two postulates – dependency theory and social
injustice – a generously funded “social power” diplomacy
aimed at winning the support of left-wing or nationalist/
anti-imperialist intellectuals and popular groups in Latin
America and beyond.
The search for autonomy
in a pluripolar world
Chavista foreign policy, as expressed in the key 2004
document A New Strategic Map of the Bolivarian
­Revolution, fundamentally aimed at assuring Venezuela’s
autonomy, i.e. attaining the largest possible decision-­
making capacity for the country on the international scene
in order to better defend its interests and sovereignty.
Chavez was determined to undermine traditional U.S.
predominance by excluding Washington from Latin
­American integration projects and by delinking Venezuela
and its allies from “imperialist” institutions like the
International Monetary Fund and World Bank through the
creation of rival institutions like the Bank of the South and
through alternative international aid programmes.
In a highly symbolic move he also changed Venezuela’s
threat assessment by introducing the scenario of a U.S.
invasion, switched arms providers (favouring Russia and to
a lesser extent China) and adopted the Cuban national
defence doctrine of asymmetric warfare, which was
focused on the U.S. as the enemy.
Chavez’s ambitions benefitted from George W. Bush’s
unpopularity and were enhanced by the “leftward turn” in
Latin America that brought to power a series of governments questioning the neoliberal Washington Consensus.
They also benefitted from the rise of new powers with a
regional or global reach, in particular the BRICS
(Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and from the
unravelling of the European Union’s “global power”
ambitions.
Chavez broadened Venezuela’s horizon to the whole world,
appointing five vice-ministers in the Foreign Ministry to
deal with each of the five continents. He extended to the
political terrain Venezuela’s engagement with the Arab/
Muslim world, until then mostly limited to oil diplomacy.
He also actively developed relations with countries that
Venezuela had generally neglected, in particular in Africa,
which became a major beneficiary of projects sponsored by
Venezuela’s General Direction of International Technical
Cooperation. This priority, also forged in relation to
Venezuela’s African heritage, was symbolised by the
holding of South America-Africa summits in 2006 and 2009.
As a result Venezuela has become the third most active
Latin American actor in Africa, behind Brazil and Cuba.
NOREF Report – November 2014
The oil factor
Venezuela is an oil giant: it is the world’s fifth-largest
oil-exporting country and has the world’s largest proven oil
reserves. It is a petro-state: oil contributes some 94% of
state revenue and sustains the government’s core
­economic and social programmes.
Oil is also the pillar of the country’s foreign policy, providing Caracas with a powerful tool in its efforts to assure its
autonomy from the West, “buy” political support and gather
votes at the United Nations (UN) by promoting its soft/
social power diplomacy. It has also largely determined its
relations with oil-producing countries like Iran and Russia
and has spurred a new approach to Africa, in particular oil
producers Angola and Nigeria.
Sharply expanding a policy that had already been tested by
Chavez’s predecessors, Venezuela has turned its national
oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), into
a major foreign policy instrument. Oil has been the pivot of
ALBA and has sustained the PetroAmerica plan aimed at
energy integration in Latin America. Its major achievement
is PetroCaribe, which provides 19 Central American and
Caribbean states, in particular Cuba, with up to 200,000
barrels a day of oil and petroleum products on preferential
terms.
However, despite a fall in its imports from Venezuela, the
U.S. remains Caracas’s largest customer and hosts a major
Venezuelan state-owned company, Citgo Petroleum
Corporation, which runs refineries and a large gasoline
distribution network on U.S. soil. The U.S. decision to
invest heavily in its own tar oil and shale gas reserves
makes it all the more important for Caracas to radically
alter and diversify its own export patterns if oil is to serve
the purpose of assuring growing autonomy for Venezuela’s
international ambitions.
Playing the oil card at home and abroad has been a
double-edged sword, however. While enabling the image of
a generous state, it has worsened the perception of a
mono-commodity, rentier and clientelist country incapable
of properly managing the “devil’s excrement”, a term
coined, ominously, by renowned Venezuelan economist and
OPEC co-founder Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso. Opaque oil
budgets have provided the Venezuelan government with
discretionary funds to finance its allies around the region,
but have increased spaces for corruption both at home and
abroad. Undertaking these national and international social
and political missions has also led PDVSA to neglect its
core business of drilling for and refining oil.
Who decides?
The Venezuelan diplomatic corps has experienced major
changes in the last two decades. The old Foreign Ministry
elite has been displaced by political appointees with less
experience and little autonomy. Hugo Chavez also reinforced the tradition of “presidential diplomacy”. Even if the
position of foreign minister was more stable than other
cabinet posts – Nicolas Maduro was in charge between
2006 and 2012 – it was largely marginalised by the towering figure of the president and by his colleague at the
Energy Ministry who controlled PDVSA and effectively
managed the “petrol-isation” of the country’s international
relations.
After Chavez’ death foreign policy is still being decided by
a small group in the presidential palace, with the acknowledged input of Cuban advisers and above all of the military.
Inspired by a national security doctrine and a geopolitical
vision of its foreign relations, the army has been assuming
an increasing prominence and expanding its national and
international roles and missions.
The opposition and other stakeholders, like the business
community, are not really consulted. A strict law on
non-governmental organisations (NGOs), in particular the
so-called Eva Golinger law related to international funding,
has also mostly excluded civil society voices. The United
Socialist Party of Venezuela frequently releases statements
on international issues, but its influence on the formulation
of policies is very limited.
The foreign policy establishment, however, is not
­monolithic. There are differences of opinion between
a more ideological faction, which follows a strongly
pro-third world, socialist and anti-U.S. position, and a more
institutional/pragmatic sector, which is particularly
focused on retaining the support of the major powers in the
region, in particular Brazil, and is attracted by China’s and
Russia’s economic and political models. Chavez’s death,
the rise of a radicalised opposition and the recent
­economic difficulties have crystallised divisions within the
ruling coalition on how to manage international relations.
Venezuelan public opinion has not been completely positive
about Chavista foreign policy. But foreign policy has been
trumped by domestic issues and therefore has not significantly influenced election results. In fact, Chavista leaders
have used aggressive “anti-imperialism” to serve a major
domestic political purpose: that of unifying the various
factions of the pro-government coalition and stigmatising
an “unpatriotic opposition”, which in its turn has used the
patriotic argument to denounce the government’s “Cuban
connection”.
U.S.-Venezuelan relations
The relationship with the U.S. has been the key definer of
Chavista foreign policy. In the early 2000s the unpopularity
of the Bush administration and growing opposition to the
Washington Consensus provided Chavez with the opportunity to project himself as a “game changer” and a leader of
Latin America’s permanent quest for “true” independence.
Early on Chavez decided to distance himself from the U.S.
by stopping military and “drug war” cooperation.
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NOREF Report – November 2014
The tensions increased with the Bush administration’s
response to the September 11th 2001 attacks and really
crashed after the 2002 coup d’état, which Chavez
­denounced as a consequence of Washington neoconservatives’ alleged support for Venezuelan putschists.
The shrillness of Chavez’s verbal attacks on President
Bush and his association with countries hostile to the U.S.,
in particular Iran, Libya and Syria, seriously compromised
bilateral relations.
Washington considers Venezuela as a hostile nation that
does not miss any opportunity to directly undermine U.S.
interests and strategies. The U.S. has been particularly
critical of Venezuela’s links with Iran and military supply
and cooperation ties with Russia. It holds Venezuela
responsible for the derailment of the U.S.-backed Free
Trade Area of the Americas and regularly accuses it of
being a major transit point for cocaine smuggling into the
U.S. and Europe.
The two countries have often “played chicken” but, despite
expulsions of diplomats and boisterous statements,
relations have not reached a point of no return. Until very
recently – in the wake of the 2014 street protests – the U.S.
had only taken limited punitive measures, like the blocking
of arms and military technology sales to Caracas, while on
the economic front a pact of relative non-aggression had
prevailed due in particular to the oil factor. Despite political
tensions Venezuela has remained a reliable oil exporter to
the U.S. and the U.S. has not threatened to retaliate against
Venezuelan oil properties on its soil. Venezuela is still the
fourth-largest U.S. oil supplier.
In fact, the tone of U.S.-Venezuelan relations has been
largely determined by the prominence in both countries of
ideological groups (U.S. neoconservatives and radical
Bolivarianists) who draw part of their respective internal
influence from the radicalism of their mutually reinforcing
antagonistic discourses.
The Venezuelan government’s anti-U.S. rhetoric and
policies do not really reflect the feelings of the majority of
the Venezuelan people, however: according to a 2014 Pew
Research Center survey, 62% of Venezuelans have
a favourable view of the U.S. (only 37% have a similar view
of Cuba). The government’s attitude, however, acts as
a unifier of core factions of the Chavista coalition and
therefore serves a key partisan objective.
Aware that it does not have much influence on Venezuela’s
internal political dynamics, the Obama administration first
followed a policy of apparent benign neglect, choosing
caution and patience. With the rise of street protests in
early 2014 the stigmatising discourses have reappeared,
however, with Secretary of State John Kerry blasting “the
regime’s terror campaign” at the risk of providing
­legitimacy to the more radical wing of the opposition and
undermining its relations with other Latin American states
bent on finding a mediated solution. However, the pressure
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of the Republican Party – reflecting the anti-Castro and
pro-Israel lobbies’ hostility to Caracas – has been such that
the administration eventually agreed to adopt limited
sanctions, i.e. visa restrictions imposed on an unspecified
group of Venezuelan officials in late July 2014.
As Washington neither expects – nor hopes for – a sudden
collapse of the Maduro government, which might have
unpredictable consequences in the region, a scenario in
which the influence of the policies of the former president
is reduced is premised on the capacity of middle-of-theroad South American leaders, in particular Brazil, to pacify
tensions; on the rise of a more moderate opposition able to
attract enough disillusioned Chavista voters; and on the
emergence of more pragmatic factions within the Chavista
coalition. However, the July 2014 incident over the U.S.
indictment of former Venezuelan military intelligence chief
Hugo Carvajal on drug-trafficking charges and the support
given by Caracas to Moscow in the current “new cold war”
context have largely derailed these expectations.
Latin America
While playing on the global scene, Chavez’s main focus was
on Latin America. Although his Latin American policy
tended to be more pragmatic than his global activism, he
resolutely and unabashedly chose Cuba as Venezuela’s
main strategic partner and Castroism as its ideological
benchmark. Although this policy has met sharp criticism
among part of the public and within institutionalist and
nationalist sectors of the army, both governments have
found crucial mutual benefits in these relations. Chavismo
– a movement closer to traditional Latin American nationalism and military populism than to Marxism and socialism
– was blessed by the towering revolutionary figure of Fidel
Castro, a distinction that reinforces its appeal in key
Venezuelan constituencies and abroad. The presence of
thousands of Cuban medical personnel and educators in
Venezuela has also helped Chavismo to implement its
domestic social agenda, while Cuban political, military and
intelligence advisers have helped the Venezuelan regime to
tighten its control over the opposition.
Cuba has largely benefitted from Venezuelan generous oil
supplies – between 100,000 and 130,000 barrels a day – at
preferential prices, as well as from Hugo Chavez’s efforts
to promote “Latin Americans only can apply” institutions
like the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and
the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States
(CELAC).
Havana has played a significant role in the definition of
Venezuela’s foreign policy by guiding it in its own system of
alliances with former Soviet republics (Russia, Belarus,
Uzbekistan, etc.), the remaining communist countries
(Vietnam in particular, North Korea), anti-Western countries, so-called “rogue” countries/groups in the Arab world
(Qaddafi’s Libya, Syria, Hizbullah, etc.) and Iran.
NOREF Report – November 2014
On most international issues Cuba and Venezuela have
followed the same line. At times, however, Fidel Castro
reportedly had to “tame” Hugo Chavez and advise more
caution on Iran, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) guerrilla movement and Latin American
integration. Although being a major actor within ALBA,
Cuba realistically favours a non-ideological form of Latin
American unity that would normalise its relations with the
rest of the continent and prepare for the normalisation of
relations with the U.S. Its active participation in the
Colombian peace process also reflects this strategy.
Because Cuba’s economic fate and reform process largely
depend on Venezuela’s economic largesse, political
stability and economic sustainability trump “ideological
purity”. Cuba favours stability since, as Wolf Grabendorff
(2014) warns, “a Venezuelan shock might have similar, but
by no means, identical, consequences to the Soviet shock
in 1991, when Cuba’s economy contracted by about 35%”.
Latin American integration: subverting
the Inter-American system
The relationship with Cuba also explains Venezuela’s
approach to Latin American integration. The oil-doctors
contract between the two countries inspired the launch of
ALBA, an alliance premised on a rejection of the U.S. and
the neoliberal agenda. It was imagined as the incubator
and hard core of a new wave of Latin American integration
based on ideological notions of solidarity more than on the
commercial principles undergirding Mercosur or the
Andean Community.
Although at the Punta del Este 2005 Summit of the
­Americas Chavez was largely instrumental in torpedoing
the U.S.-inspired Free Trade Area of the Americas, his
ALBA project met limited success, since it only attracted
Bolivia, Ecuador and a few Caribbean micro states. In fact,
the Venezuelan government’s moves were viewed with
irritation by some Latin American countries trying to
reconcile increased Latin American integration with
rational relations with the U.S. While hailed in public
abrazos as a great Latin American leader, Chavez was often
described in private as a spoiler and a fragmenter of Latin
American unity.
Venezuela has succeeded, however, in rocking the
­Washington-based Organisation of American States (OAS)
and other Inter-American institutions by pushing for “U.S.
stay home” integration initiatives. To a large extent the OAS
has been neutralised – for instance, in the case of the
dialogue between the government and the opposition in
Venezuela – but the new South American or Latin American
institutions UNASUR and CELAC have not eliminated
persistent and substantive disagreements among its
members. Caracas, for instance, disagrees with Brazil’s
rapprochements between Mercosur and countries of the
Alliance of the Pacific (Chile, Colombia, etc.), the latter
being seen in “Bolivarian” circles as a neoliberal and
pro-U.S. project.
The “anti-hegemonic” strategy has had a deep impact on
Venezuela’s adherence to the Inter-American human rights
system. Although the 1999 constitution clearly establishes
the prevalence of international norms over domestic law,
Venezuela has denounced the Inter-American Convention
of Human Rights and withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the
Inter-American Court of Human Rights. It has exempted
itself from the scrutiny of the Inter-American Human
Rights Commission, an organ that it considers a tool of the
U.S.
This policy is replicated on the global scene. When
­Venezuela was elected to the Human Rights Council for the
2013-16 period with 154 votes (much more than the
minimum of 97, but less than Brazil, which received 184
votes), international human rights NGOs protested that
Chavez and Maduro had systematically aligned their
country with authoritarian states on most human rights or
geopolitical issues. They also argued that Venezuela’s
receding human rights diplomacy reflected its poor
internal record. Although these NGOs refrain from calling
Venezuela a full-blown dictatorship, they have sternly
indicted Chavismo for its centralisation of power, its
polarisation politics, the erosion of checks and balances,
the harassment of the media, brutal policing, growing
militarization, and the rejection of international scrutiny.
These judgments were repeated when Venezuela was
designated in October 2014 by the Latin American group to
join the UN Security Council for the 2015-16 session as
a non-permanent member.
Venezuela has reacted by denouncing the pro-U.S. bias of
international NGOs and more subtly by extolling its social
justice agenda at home and abroad. To some extent
Caracas has tried to hijack the World Social Forum agenda
from its Brazilian creators in line with its internal social
and economic priorities and its desire to present itself as
a socially progressive alternative in the region. These
claims of “social justice” also inspire its policy on climate
change and its approach to environmental issues.
­Venezuela speaks in terms of “climate justice” and rejects
a policy of oil production or consumption cuts that would
compromise its development and “socialist” agenda, to the
chagrin of ecological groups.
Brazil has been the other “grand definer” of Venezuela’s
Latin American policies. Since the rise of Chavismo,
Brazil, especially under President “Lula” da Silva, has
publicly embraced Venezuela. The idea was to placate
Brazilian left-wing circles concerned over Lula’s adhesion
to a mildly social-democratic economic agenda and to use
Chavez as a bulldozer behind which Brazil could assert its
own national interests, i.e. reinforcing its own autonomy in
relation to the U.S. and U.S.-dominated institutions, and
carving for itself a more prominent role in South America
and on the global scene.
Brasília has endorsed Venezuela’s attack on the
­Washington Consensus and supported its Latin American
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integration visions, as long as these can advance its own
interests. However, it has distanced itself from Chavismo’s
radical anti-Americanism and anti-imperialism and has
tried to use its political capital in order to moderate
Venezuela, draw it away from brinkmanship, and prevent it
from falling into forms of violence and chaos that would
reverberate across the whole region.
Brazil is also uncomfortable with Venezuela’s relations
with “out of area” powers like Iran, Russia and China.
These links complicate relations with the U.S., which Brazil
considers a key partner, and hampers Brasília’s own
ambitions to act as a benevolent hegemonic power in South
America.
Relations with Colombia, Venezuela’s traditional regional
rival, are a major test. The two countries are deeply
interdependent (because of trade, migration, drug-trafficking, transborder smuggling and security issues) and
represent polar opposites on the current Latin American
ideological map. Under Chavez the relationships went on
a roller-coaster ride from episodes of shrill hostility to
moments of accommodation. Caracas’s alleged relations
with the FARC were a particular issue, as were President
Alvaro Uribe’s alleged links with Venezuela’s most radical
right-wing opposition.
Despite the advent of the more congenial President Juan
Manuel Santos and of the more pragmatic Nicolas Maduro,
Caracas and Bogotá remain on different banks of the river.
Colombia is the key U.S. ally in the region, while Venezuela
remains the main U.S. basher.
Although the current nature of its relations to the
­Colombian armed groups is difficult to determine with
certainty, Caracas – which has observer status at the
Havana-based Colombian peace negotiations – has been
changing its position on the Colombian armed conflict.
According to several sources, Cuba has convinced the
Chavista government to diminish its ambiguous and at
times fickle relations with the FARC. Havana considers that
the FARC should abandon its armed insurgency and
instead negotiate strong political gains (agrarian reform)
and security guarantees (protection against targeted
assassinations of its militants) in order to enter the
political process. Cuba also considers its contribution to
a peace agreement to end the longest internal conflict in
Latin American as a linchpin in its intention to broaden its
international space and “respectability” and therefore open
new avenues towards increased relations with the
­European Union (EU) and, eventually, normal relations with
the U.S.
Venezuela cannot afford to break with Colombia due to the
two country’s economic interdependence and prospects of
energy partnerships. Normalisation is currently on the
agenda: in an August 2014 meeting the two heads of state
announced a plan to regulate their common border, which
serves as a sanctuary for armed and criminal groups and
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as a paradise for smugglers who undermine both countries’ legal economy and rule of law.
China
Venezuela has invested significantly on its relations with
China in order to enhance its political, diplomatic and
economic autonomy and substitute U.S. and European
partners in providing a market for its oil, assistance in
oil-fields development, financial credit and industrial
investments in consumer goods. Venezuela accounts for
6% of Chinese oil imports and has accepted some $50
billion in oil-backed loans from China since 2007. Beijing is
Venezuela’s second-largest trading partner and a major
industrial investor and has benefitted from the collapse of
Venezuela’s manufacturing industry, recurrent crises with
Colombia and purchases of goods destined for state stores.
Venezuela’s political opposition to the U.S. and its adoption
of a statist development doctrine have opened up opportunities for Chinese political and economic influence. China’s
objectives are manifold: economic (to assure its natural
resource needs and open markets for its companies), but
also diplomatic and geopolitical (to erode U.S. hegemony in
the region, control Brazil’s emergence, channel Russia’s
return to the region and score points against Taiwan, which
is still recognised by a number of Central American and
Caribbean countries that benefit from Venezuelan oil
largesse).
Caracas, however, cannot count on open-ended Chinese
support. Although cooperation has included arms sales and
high-tech ventures, Beijing refrained from being associated
with Hugo Chavez’s ideological crusades. China is also
concerned by the dysfunction of the Venezuelan state and
by the current polarisation in the country, which might
affect Chinese economic interests. Stability is the priority.
Russia
The objective of keeping oil prices high, which is essential
for Venezuela’s domestic and foreign policies, is behind
Venezuela’s relations with Russia, the world’s second-­
largest oil exporter, but Vladimir Putin’s rise to power has
also been a political boon for Chavista anti-U.S. policy.
Venezuela has been able to “provoke” the U.S. by offering
a bridgehead to Russia in the “American lake”
(the Caribbean basin) and by delinking the Venezuelan
army from Washington through a dramatic increase of
arms purchases from Russia and the holding of joint naval
exercises.
Although Russia’s renewed presence in the U.S. backyard
is not the same as the Soviet presence during the cold war,
Venezuela sees it as an additional sign that U.S. hegemony
is declining and considers its Russian connections as
another guarantee of “crisis internationalisation and
stakes raising” should there be a confrontation with
Washington. Caracas has mostly sided with Moscow on
NOREF Report – November 2014
international issues, from its support to the Bashar
al-Assad regime in Syria to its endorsement of Russia’s
annexation of Crimea and meddling in Ukraine.
Iran and Arab “rogue” states/groups
51st on the list of EU trading partners. In 20114 the EU was
Venezuela’s third-largest trading partner (8.8% of total
trade) behind the U.S. (35.1%) and China (15.1%). The EU is
a major foreign investor (€24.1 billion in 2011), but relations are, in the European Commission’s (2014) own words,
Relations with Iran pre-date Chavismo: they were based on
the two countries’ shared objective to push up oil prices in
order to promote their internal development and international influence. The alliance with Tehran served in
particular to counterbalance Saudi Arabia in OPEC.
challenging for EU operators, in large part due to
policies which have been central to the economic
strategy of the government in the past few years:
foreign exchange controls, price controls, expropriation
and other forms of State intervention in the economy.
The oil factor remains central, even though the two
countries have tried rather erratically to cooperate in other
economic ventures. In fact, the relationship has taken
a strong ideological strand. Dealing with Tehran is a key
determinant of anti-Americanism and Chavez relished
publicising his meetings with former Iranian president
Ahmadinejad. He also backed Iran to the hilt in its nuclear
strategy: Venezuela was the only nation to oppose the
Atomic Energy Agency’s sanctions against Tehran in 2003
and 2006. It also helped Tehran to expand its diplomatic
and political presence among ALBA member states.
Relations between the EU and Venezuela are not governed
by any bilateral legal framework, unlike other Mercosur
countries. However, Venezuela is involved in institutional
dialogues with the EU through its participation in the Rio
Group and Mercosur.
The “Iran factor” looms large over the U.S.-Venezuelan
relationship. Washington is particularly incensed by Iran’s
military sales and assistance to Venezuela, Caracas’s
constant support of the Iranian nuclear programme and its
alleged cosy relations with groups close to Iran, like the
Lebanese Shia militia Hizbullah.
In both the U.S. and Venezuela radical ideological groups
take these relations as a definer of the nature of the
Chavista regime. While neoconservative groups and the
pro-Israel lobby campaign vigorously to ostracise
­Venezuela as a pro-terrorist and pro-Iranian country, the
Venezuelan anti-imperialist left considers the Iranian
connection as evidence of Chavista determination to
confront the U.S. Iran, however, under its new president,
Hassan Rouhani, appears interested in adopting a more
moderate path due to his desire to de-escalate conflict with
the West over the nuclear issue and to reshuffle alliances
in order to confront the Sunni jihadist threat.
Venezuela has adopted a similar anti-U.S. guideline in its
relations with the Arab world. This policy is partly inspired
by the presence of a significant Arab minority (comprising
6% of the population, mostly Christians from Lebanon and
Syria). Caracas is a major supporter of Syria’s President
Bashar al-Assad and Hizbullah. It follows a strongly
pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel policy that has repercussions in the U.S., where some Jewish organisations have
accused Chavista authorities of anti-Semitism, a claim that
in turn complicates Venezuela’s relations with Washington.
European Union
Venezuela is not a major EU trading partner. In 2013 its
share of total EU trade stood at a paltry 0.2%, i.e. it was
Pre-Chavista foreign policy considered the EU to be
a model for Latin American integration, social and economic development and pluralistic diplomacy. It also saw
the EU-Latin American relationship as a “diagonal” that
could help “pluralise” Latin America’s relations and soften
U.S. hegemony in the region. The two major political
parties, AD and COPEI, had strong connections to their
sister parties in Europe and both pushed for more political
dialogue and economic strategic partnership with the EU.
Since Chavez’s presidency the EU is mostly seen as an
adversary (in a somewhat milder category than the U.S.)
and EU relations with Caracas have soured as Venezuela
chose to align itself with Cuba, Iran and Russia and as the
EU shifted more to the right and included former communist countries deeply suspicious of Venezuela-Cuba ties.
However, despite disagreements and tensions, the EU-­
Latin American summits never reached the point of
acrimonious confrontation that Inter-American relations
experienced, except in relation to Spain, especially under
the Popular Party government. Although Spain is the
second-largest direct investor in Venezuela behind the
U.S., its relations with Caracas have been on a roller-­
coaster ride with tense moments when President Chavez
accused Madrid of siding with the 2002 coup leaders and
Madrid accused Caracas of providing sanctuary to ETA
(the armed Basque separatist group) fugitives.
Bilateral state-to-state relations with European countries
are distant, but mostly correct. However, while COPEI and
AD governments directly dealt with the European establishment, the “Bolivarians” have ideological connections
with EU leftist sectors that are outside the corridors of
power. Bilateral relations have soured recently over the
Ukraine crisis when Caracas sided with Russia.
Conclusion
Since 1999 Chavismo has profoundly changed Venezuela
and constituted a power structure and social base and even
a “deep state” that seem to protect it from an opposition
7
challenge. However, the ruling coalition is also deeply
divided on the road to follow and on the meaning of Hugo
Chavez’s legacy.
Today, Venezuela’s international influence is clearly on the
wane. Chavez’s death and his replacement by a much less
charismatic leader have undermined Venezuela’s visibility
and attraction. The economic crisis has absorbed the
Venezuelan authorities, distracted them from international
issues, and reduced the resources that can be devoted to
foreign policy, upsetting the PetroCaribe scheme and
social power diplomacy. Venezuela ’s membership of the
UN Security Council might however provide a renewed
opportunity for Caracas’ international advocacy.
News media reports on a country immersed in basic goods
shortages, runaway inflation (56% in 2013), wholesale
corruption, massive fiscal deficits, violent protests, rising
militarism and an extreme level of street crime have
seriously dented Venezuela’s image abroad even when fair
observers acknowledge the positive impact of Chavista
social programmes on poverty reduction and the poor’s
sense of empowerment.
A Venezuelan collapse would have major repercussions for
the region and if the exact impact is hard to assess, most
agree that it would hurt in particular the poorer countries
that benefit from Venezuelan largesse, while simultaneously threatening the investment climate in the entire
region. Such a scenario would also threaten the Colombian
peace talks, impact on Cuba’s reform process and exacerbate Venezuela’s alleged role as a growing international
pivot of the drug trade.
References
European Commission. 2014. “Countries and regions:
Venezuela.” September 9th. <http://ec.europa.eu/trade/
policy/countries-and-regions/countries/venezuela/>
Grabendorff, W. 2014. Cuba: Reforming the Economy and
Opening Society. Oslo: NOREF.
Venezuela can still rely on its ideological allies in Latin
America, but its other partners, in particular Brazil, are
concerned by the country’s developments and behind
a facade of support are trying to de-escalate Venezuela’s
current internal conflict and deradicalise/depolarise its
actors in both the opposition and the government.
THE AUTHOR
Jean-Paul Marthoz. The European correspondent of the Committee
to Protect Journalists, professor of international journalism at the
Université Catholique de Louvain, and foreign affairs columnist for
the Belgian daily Le Soir. He reported from Latin America during
the 1970s and 1980s and has written numerous books, reports and
essays on the region, especially Où va l’Amérique latine?
(GRIP, 2007). He is also the author of NOREF publications on
Turkey, Brazil and South Africa.
Disclaimer
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of view are those of the author and do not reflect those of the
organisations for which he works or NOREF. NOREF does not
give any warranties, either expressed or implied, concerning the
­content.
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